Giraffe has same skin-lightening condition as Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson may have had something in common with a giraffe discovered in Kenya. The two seem to be linked by a rare skin condition called vitiligo, where the skin gradually loses its pigment.

Now Zoe Muller from the Rothschild’s Giraffe Project and the University of Bristol, UK, reports the first case of vitiligo in a wild giraffe.

Between 2009 and 2016 Muller followed a single male giraffe living in the Soysambu Conservancy in Kenya. After taking more than 430 photographs of it she noticed something unusual.

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“I first started to see a few white spots appear on the animal’s coat back in November 2009, and was puzzled as I had never seen this before,” Muller says.

Over the next six years Muller saw the white patches grow and spread. “There have been a few reports of white giraffes before in the wild, but those animals are either albino or leucistic, which means they are born white and have been that way for their entire life,” says Muller. “There has never been a documented case of a giraffe turning white over time.”

A skin infection might be to blame, Muller thinks, as she recalls seeing this giraffe behaving oddly before it started changing colour.

Move the slider on the image below to see the shocking change:

Before: Zoe Muller Rothschild’s Giraffe Project. After: Justin+Lauren

Easy target

“I noticed the giraffe would engage in excessive scratching. He would position himself in a thick bush, and rock backwards and forwards for thirty minutes or so, scratching his head and neck area,” she says.

Muller worries that the giraffe, already a member of an endangered species, may be threatened by some sort of infection.

“With fewer than 1100 Rothschild’s giraffes left in the wild, if there was some kind of infection, or disease at work in this population, it could have a serious impact upon the survival of the subspecies in the wild,” she says.

The colour change also means a loss of camouflage, which could make the giraffe an easier target for large carnivores, if there were any in the reserve, says Muller. Luckily, there are none at the moment.

The giraffe is currently alive and well, and appears to be completely unaffected by its unusual skin colour.